Dear Sirs,

My best friend and I have come up with a story that we know would be an excellent anime show. How do we go about getting it produced? Will you animate it for us? We know that it will be a success because it has a lot of the same elements as we see in popular anime.

—Hopeful Writers

Writers,

If you know the Magic Success Formula for making a great hit in anime then I'd definitely buy that otherwise I'm not interested in your project.
First off: If you have done good market research then it is possible that you may have an idea what sort of show would sell in the USA but unless you've done it here and are as good as a producer here at knowing what sells here it is unlikely that you will create anything that Japanese audiences find interesting. If your story has ANY elements of Japanese culture in it then you might as well throw it out right now because there is no way they will accept the interpretation of their culture by a foreigner. Most of the time foreigners fixate on small things and their interpretation of Japan is media—whether popular (like anime) or news-based and is mostly wrong. Don't even give your characters Japanese names. If I was to see a story proposal with more than one Japanese name in the cast list written by a non-Japanese person I'd probably reject it without reading it just because the interpretation of the characters motivations is bound to be weird. There are no doubt exceptions to this.
Second: There is such a vast backlog of work that is sitting in file cabinets and desk draws and closets that is in line before you that it is highly unlikely that yours will be either given priority or be any better than anything in those stacks. You're up against the greatest creators in anime.
Third: Your submission will have to be in perfectly flawless Japanese. The Japanese companies do not have translators on staff and getting a professional translation is both expensive and in the vast majority of cases, a waste of time. If it is in Japanese and they have to edit your writing to make it readable they're not going to accept that either. It's the same with Hollywood film scripts: send a linguistically deficient script to an agent and they will either charge you to edit it or reject it.
Fourth: Japanese animation production companies have NO money. If they did they'd be producing their own original work more often. Sponsors fund all the work that you see. If you submit a script to them the best they can do is look at it and say, "Gee, this is nice." They're not going to sell it for you. If you want to get your script into hands that could potentially pay to make it you need to submit it to a sponsor. King Records, Victor, Sony, Bandai, Pony—whoever. If you want to get something animated, it's strictly BYOB—Bring Your Own Bucks.
Fifth: Don't send your script to me, ask me to translate it or ask me to sell it. I am your competitor. I try to sell my own concepts so in this I am your competition. Maybe I will be nice to you and say, "I'll try" but that means that your proposal will go in a drawer.
Sixth: We already have WAAAAAAAY too much cannibalism between shows now—the last thing we need is more clones of popular shows.

Yo dudes,

I'm going on vacation to Tokyo for a week. Where are the good anime shops? Where can I buy doujinshi? What else should I see there? Will you show me around?

—H. Jones

Dear H.,

I usually advise people to hit the Animates in Kichijoji and Shibuya, the Manga no Mori shops in Shinjuku and Shibuya and the Mandarake (that's mahn-da-ra-ke) in Nakano although the one is Shibuya is pretty good too. There are others but these shops are pretty consistent in having lots of stuff. If you're looking for older things (6 months to 2 years out of circulation) then Mandarake is your best bet. Don't expect to find anyting over 3 years old unless you can find some really good used book shops. There are sometimes maps to these shops printed in their advertisements in anime magazines.
Both Mandarake and Tora no Ana are good sources for doujinshi. Check their ads for locations.
As for other sights, get a Lonely Planet guidebook.
Will you pay me $500 a day to show you around? I didn't think so.

Dear Mr. Scott,

If you had a hammer, would you hammer in the morning, evening and all over the land?

—Questioner

Questioner,

No, I would hammer all over the foreheads of some producers I know.

Hey,

New anime all suck! The days of TENCHI were so much better! What is wrong with you people?

—Looker to the Past

Dear Looker,

Ever taken time to listen to the pronunciation of the word "molybdenum"? Mol-ib-de-num. Molllll iiiiiiib diiiiii nummmm. Sounds kind of like a chanted sutra doesn't it? Molybdenum is a hard, silvery-white metallic element used to toughen alloy steels and soften tungsten alloy. Atomic number 42—there's definitely something going on there. It has a boiling point of 4,612° C so it's not something you'd be using for homemade jewelry. About two-thirds of the world supply is a byproduct of copper mining.

Dear TV Safety,

I am not an artist but I feel that I'm a decent writer and I am interested in writing anime shows. How can I get a job in the anime industry?

—Darryl Y.

Hi Darryl,

In order to write an anime show you would need to do it in flawless lovely Japanese. Just as an English language scriptwriter should have a good knowledge of the society and culture of his target audience. the language and movies/TV, a Japanese language scriptwriter needs the same. You will need a command of the Japanese language that exceeds the average Japanese person's. Either that or you need to have a writing partner who is more than a translator and can actually write well themselves. You can't just mail in your script in English and expect that it will magically be perfectly translated and produced just like you saw it in your head.
On the original series I am developing right now the original scripts are in English then translated into Japanese where they are rewritten by a Japanese writer. Before the show is produced the two scripts need to be balanced for content, action and timing. The same concept will be communicated in two different ways by the different speakers who will also use different body language and expressions. In order to balance this you need writers who can understand both languages and a director who can as well.

Anime sucks. American animation is so much more fluid and the characters have much better expression and the stories are much more interesting. Animation is an American art which the Japanese only make a pale copy of.

—A Real Animation Fan

Dear "Fan,"

I've heard this sort of thing before and always from the same type of people who like to take people of different skin colors from them and drag them to death behind pickup trucks. The world will probably never be free of people like that: Jingoistic microminded individuals like this now have access to the Internet and can spew their infantile garbage about with impunity. The vast majority of these Neanderthals are more interested in provoking violent responses from usually intelligent people so they can giggle and think how superior they are.
Neither American and Japanese style animation is superior, just different. Someone may prefer one to the other just as they prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate. Animation purists might say that anime uses a lot fewer drawings per second so it is jerky and blah blah blah but those purists have more than likely never animated anything of perfect quality themselves, nor have they ever seen anything of perfect quality so they can be safely ignored. These are the same tired arguments that came up when any major art style change occurred in the past in any country in the world.
On the other hand I've heard some anime fans saying that anime is vastly superior to any American animation and they're just as wrong as those with the opposite opinion. Again, it's the chocolate versus vanilla concept.
For the most part I have little interest in USA cartoon-style animation like TOM & JERRY and COW & CHICKEN and all. That's not because I think it's bad but because it's just not interesting to me. It's been that way since I was a child. I don't like Rum Raisin ice cream either. If you want to challenge me on my personal preferences I have a hammer for your forehead around here somewhere.

Dear Beyond TV Safety,

I've heard people say that a show "went otaku". What does that mean?

Dear Person Who Forgot to Sign Their Name,

In the anime industry we say a show has "gone otaku" if the show's focus turns from a general audience to an almost purely fan audience. This is mostly noticeable through the following:

	•	More fan service (shots of girls' butts, up-the-skirt shots, longer shots of the costumes, etc.)
	•	A greater emphasis placed on the voice actors. Additional soundtracks and drama albums and photo books of the female voice actors can be very lucrative.
	•	The story begins to take on more otaku-oriented elements. You'll see a change to more focus on sex especially, mostly the aforementioned fan service stuff, more sexual innuendo and jokes, homosexuality between the characters, gender issues, more character investigation (looking into things which aren't necessary to the telling of the main story).
	•	The number of drawings has been reduced. When producers feel that a show is being watched mostly by fans they cut back the budgets because they feel the fans will still watch it no matter what it looks like.
	•	You see a lot more about it in the Japanese animation magazines. When a show is dragging they try very hard to pump up interest in it.

A show going otaku does not necessarily mean that it will be worse. The most common reason for it going bad after that is because the staff would rather make a non-otaku target show. In some cases this saves shows and allows them to live another season or two.

Dear Mr. EX Safety,

I want to make my own doujinshi and sell it at Comic Market. How can I do that?

Dear Other Person Who Didn't Sign Their Letter,

Most people have to go through the ritual sacrifice of a goat in order to sell their douijinshi but you might want to check the English Comic Market web page first.

That's all the time we have for now. Tune in next time when maybe I'll answer some more mail. Or maybe I won't.